To You, Moscow (S)

An animated history of the city of Moscow, including the Nazi invasion, made to honor of the city’s 800th anniversary. Vladimir Paperny (writer and cultural historian): When we look at this film about the 800th anniversary of the city of Moscow, what’s amazing is that it’s done in the painterly style of the 19th Century realism, almost like Repin and Levitan. Everything is painted in this realistic manner. And then somehow there is an almost seamless transition from this style to actual color photographs and 35mm color film. That suggests that the realism in the painting was almost the same way as they saw it in the early Renaissance. The object of painting is to trick the viewer, to make the viewer believe that what he or she is looking at is real life. That’s why when they cut from the animated realistic painting to color photograph or color film we don’t see any contradiction. It is just a natural transition. Now when you look at the films of the 70s, you see some careful attempts to bring some modernism into [these ideological films]; you can see some impressionistic touches, some kind of semi-avant-garde attempts, very modest, very careful. but it’s there.